SYDNEY, Nov. 8 (Xinhua) -- Leaders of an Aboriginal community in Western Australia (WA) say lives have been put at risk by the government's failure to provide them with clean water.
Tap water at the Pandanus Park community, 2,400 km north of Perth, has high levels of nitrate making it unsafe for consumption by children and pregnant women.
Patricia Riley, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the community, first made the state government aware of the issue in early 2016.
"(The tap water) tastes like sewerage, you can taste salt. It makes you dehydrated. It's got an odd smell even in the shower. It's like you're suffocating in the shower," Riley told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Wednesday.
"It's a life-threatening situation we're in, drinking the nitrates."
Nitrates have been linked to elevated rates of diabetes, kidney disease and cancer.
New South Wales (NSW) charity The Yaru Foundation shipped a water filtration system to the remote community, but Riley said two taps between 150 residents was not enough.
"We are lucky to have it," she said.
"It's really affecting us, but it's good we've got someone from another state coming to support us. We would appreciate if our own government had actually done this."
A 2015 report by the WA Auditor General found that tap water in more than a dozen Aboriginal communities in the state contained enough nitrates to cause blue baby syndrome.
Blue baby syndrome is a potentially fatal disease that can cause cyanosis, a condition which causes the blue or purple discolouration of skin, in infants.
The WA government has supplied the community with bottled water for drinking, but Riley said washing with the nitrates-heavy water had caused widespread skin irritations in the community.
"They said they're looking for funding while they come up with some kind of plan. They said soon, they always say soon but we don't know," she said.
